HR - employee privacy notice - Privacy notices

Herefordshire Council is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with Data Protection Law. It is also intended to provide you with other information which is required under this law.

It applies to all employees, workers and contractors.

We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses
• Date of birth
• Gender
• Next of kin and emergency contact information
• National Insurance number
• Bank account details, payroll records and tax status information
• Salary, annual leave, pension and benefits information
• Start date
• Location of employment or workplace
• Recruitment information (including copies of right to work documentation, references and other information included in an application or cover letter or as part of the application process)
• Employment records (including job titles, work history, working hours, training records and professional memberships)
• Performance information
• Disciplinary and grievance information
• Information about your use of our information and communications systems
• Driving licence number and vehicle insurance if you are required to drive on behalf of the council as part of your role

We may also collect, store and use the following "special categories" of more sensitive personal information:

• Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation
• Trade union membership
• Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records
• Information about criminal convictions and offences

We collect personal information about employees, workers and contactors through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers.

We will collect additional personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us.

Herefordshire Council is the data controller. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under Data Protection Law to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below.

• Making a decision about your recruitment or appointment
• Determining the terms on which you work for us
• Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK
• Paying you and, if you are an employee, deducting tax and National Insurance contributions
• Issuing you with contractual correspondence and other employment and pay related documentation
• Providing benefits to you
• Liaising with your pension provider and HMRC
• Conducting performance reviews, managing performance and determining performance requirements
• Making decisions about salary reviews and compensation
• Gathering evidence for possible grievance or disciplinary hearings
• Making decisions about your continued employment or engagement
• Making arrangements for the termination of our working relationship
• Education, training and development requirements
• Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other employees, workers and contractors, including accidents at work
• Ascertaining your fitness to work
• Managing sickness absence
• Complying with health and safety obligations
• Equal opportunities monitoring

Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

Special categories of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

• In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent
• Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in connection with employment

Our obligations as an employer

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

• We will use information relating to leaves of absence, which may include sickness absence or family related leaves, to comply with employment and other laws
• We will use information about your physical or mental health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety in the workplace and to assess your fitness to work, to provide appropriate workplace adjustments, to monitor and manage sickness absence and to administer benefits
• We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting
• We will use trade union membership information to pay trade union premiums, register the status of a protected employee and to comply with employment law obligations

Microsoft Office 365 is the platform which all council services use. This cloud based suite of software from Microsoft updates our previous versions of Microsoft Office, while bringing together new technologies and tools to create a more collaborative working environment for every day use. Please read the privacy notice relating to Office 365.

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you
• Where we need to comply with a legal obligation
• Where there is a legitimate purpose in us doing so
• Where you have provided consent

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

• Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else's interests)
• Where it is needed in the public interest

In circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Data Protection Officer (DPO).

We may have to share your personal information with third parties, including third-party service providers. All of which are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

On occasions, your information may be accessed by contracted IT support organisations in the delivery of IT support for both the IT infrastructure and associated systems, for the processes detailed in this privacy notice. Access by IT support will only be for such reasons as fixing any technical issues with software, and any viewing of data will be incidental to this.

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our retention policy which is available from the DPO or the council's intranet.

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below)
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

You also have the right to make a complaint about our handling of your personal data to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Changes to this privacy notice

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time.

Data protection officer

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer, Herefordshire Council, Plough Lane, Hereford HR4 0LE, email informationgovernance@herefordshire.gov.uk

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